Strange weather in Tokyo

This is as much a story about two lost souls as it is a modern fable to sake and ramen. Hiromi Kawakami's off beat love story was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literature Prize and has gone on to strengthen Kawakami's position as one of the most popular writers of Japanese fiction today.

 The novel is first person narrated by Tsukiko, a late thirties single girl, who meets 'Sensei', an older gentleman and her former school teacher in a traditional local bar. Both Tsukiko and Sensei are alone in the city. Their essentially solitary social life is interrupted only by their late night encounters with each other. They find common ground more in the shared silence of each other's company more than in profound discussion however, they begin converse more and more freely as the sake flows.

As with Banana Yoshimoto's The Lake the prose is always succinct and precise as Kawakami uses language sparingly to bring Tsukiko to life. Their loneliness is never desperate and Kawakami expertly and gently brings them together in a number of set pieces, such as mushroom picking in the autumn or at a spa hotel in the summer, in which the relationship plays out against the changing seasons.

A reluctant romance inevitably develops between the unlikely couple but the tentative and reserved nature of the relationship is at once both strikingly contemporary and plainly old-fashioned.   

Strange Weather in Tokyo is not as kooky as Murakami but for a sense of modern 'japaneseness' this is as authentic as sashimi dipped in soy.